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Proliferation
At first, all work is lousy. The way to get good is to be prolific. Set aside some intentional time to work on your craft every day. But who has the time? That’s the right question, and we’ll come back to it. When you choose to be prolific, to work on your work daily, things […]
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Compound interest
Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. No, I’m not talking about money – that was someone way smarter than me. I’m talking about compound interest; curiosity, attentiveness, captivation, concern, enthusiasm, importance, passion, significance, sympathy. You can apply your interest to your work in a way that compounds your customers interest in your […]
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How to win a medal
If you’re new to thinking about the world through the lens of experiences then you shouldn’t feel flustered if you don’t know where to start. When we’re present for a great experience, it feels like magic – how on earth did anyone come up with that idea, with all those moving parts, in that order, […]
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Blowing bubbles
Of course magic exists. And there’s a chance you might just stumble upon some. And if magical moments are wonderful things that make life richer, then leaving them to chance seems rather unfortunate. Now, I’d put the chance that there’s a fairy living at the bottom of your garden very low the scale of reasonableness, […]
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Making magic
Where does she want to go? And what does she need to get there? If I said I was writing about Cinderella, then you might already know the answer to those two questions. And what if I said that the story wasn’t about Cinderella, but about your customer… Would you know where she wants to […]
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Foreshadowed is forearmed
You are creating expectations for people. There’s no way around it. Every interaction, and every lack of interaction contributes toward an expectation, a prediction of what it’s like to interact with you. You have no choice in whether or not to create expectations for people. But you do have a choice as to the direction […]
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Play to keep playing
One of the most important jobs of your business is to stay in business. Sure, there are a number of other jobs-to-be-done, but if you don’t stay in business you can’t do any of those other ones. And when we recognise that everyone makes (or claims to make) great products, and everyone delivers (or claims […]
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Manufactured authenticity
In The Practice Seth Godin contrasts Steely Dan with musicians like Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, and Aretha Franklin: “Steely Dan continues to sell records and stream near the top of their niche… they created and performed their work in a studio… and then spent months or years polishing the recordings to a bright sheen… But […]
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But not all the time
It’s true that many great experiences are built out of many moments, many iterations, but it’s a grave mistake to try and be remarkable all the time. The remarkable experience you seek to create is way more likely to be successful if the journey you take your customer on is mostly expected and occasionally remarkable. […]
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Many moments, many iterations
Great experiences don’t come into being all at once. They’re both a daisy chain of small moments, and a culmination of small iterations. You don’t just sit down and create a great experience for your customers. That’s not how it works. You sit down and you pay attention to the moments that already exist. And […]
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It’s fake, and that’s great
It’s fake. Of course it’s fake. And that’s ok. In fact, it’s often better than ok. It’s often great. If all your experiences were always 100% true beneath the surface, then almost all of your experiences would be on a scale from ‘meh’ to ‘bad’. The statistical odds of the serendipity required for great things […]
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Watch and learn
But not like Buzz Lightyear… Once you recognise the value of the experience economy, and you’ve decided to start adding experience design into your interactions, at some point you’ll need to try something you haven’t tried before. In fact, that’s the definition; everytime you try something new = something you haven’t tried before. The difference […]
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Ordinary people creating extraordinary experiences
You could kid yourself and try to hire “great” people. People who are always on form, who never have a bad day, who are Jedi-zen-emotional masters. But they don’t exist. Instead you could design interactions so that everyday people like you and me can consistently create great experiences. That means designing them. That means asking […]
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The authenticity of manufactured moments
Some people have a concern that manufactured moments aren’t going to be authentic. It might be true that manufactured supawood isn’t so-called “real wood”, but experiences aren’t supawood. Experiences don’t work like that. It’s easy to think about an example; in the middle of an argument, we can recognise that sometimes feelings might arise which […]
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Time to grab your surfboard
Experience Design is all around us, it’s just not widely recognised, and that might be because good experience design is invisible while the obvious attempts aren’t good experiences. And so if someone hasn’t encountered the concept of the experience economy before they look at me like I’m completely nuts. “You can’t manufacture emotions in people […]
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A surprising experience
Some people love surprises. Others hate surprises. Clearly we have a distinction between types of people… Wrong! We have a distinction between types of surprises. A surprise is a deviation from what was expected. When reality deviates from our expectations our dopamine system trains us. If the deviation from expectation resulted in something better than […]
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The experience of fairness
Humans have an innate sense of what is fair, and our sense of fairness is apart from where we grow up, or how old we are, or what we believe. When you behave in a way that’s counter to our intuitive sense of what is fair you create a terrible experience. We suffer an offence. […]
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Cutting through the fog
Some people are naturally great storytellers, maybe even some people on your team. Some people are naturally great entertainers, and maybe they even create great experiences for your customers intuitively. But no people are great all.the.time. And so great experiences need to be designed. If you and your team design the experience, then experience can […]
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Chase your audience
I read classic crime fiction, and James Hadley Chase is one of the best known crime thriller writers of all time. From 1939 to 1984 he wrote 90 titles, 50 of which have been made into films. His books are page-turners. People love them. And yet I have 15 of his books sitting on my […]
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Stepping stones to serendipity
It’s true that great experiences can be truly serendipitous, that they can happen entirely by chance. But chance doesn’t scale. You don’t have a great experience at Disneyland by chance, you have a great experience at Disneyland by design. We seem to value serendipity though, the feeling of discovery, of stumbling upon something great. And […]
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The courage to be peculiar
The experiences we remember, the moments we talk about, the ideas that spread, they are all peculiar in some way. And yet we’ve been taught that being peculiar is scary and dangerous. How can that be? The case for peculiar If those experiences and moments and ideas weren’t peculiar; if they were the average kind, […]
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Re.Mark.Able
The ideas that spread are the ideas that win. The businesses that people eagerly want to tell other people about are the businesses that win. What would it take for your business to be the topic of conversation that someone eagerly tells people about at a dinner party? When someone says, “Hey Sam, how was […]
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Create great experiences
We live in an experience economy. If you look around your life you’ll know it’s true. Everything is star rated, and if it’s not 4/5 or higher nobody’s interested. Everybody promises a great product, great service; and if everyone does it then it’s not the basis for competition. The corporate culture at the place where […]
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If you want to do it, do it for them
There’s so much stuff we want to do, all of us, things we want to accomplish. We’re the centre of those narratives. And yet, when we put someone else at the centre of those narratives, the likelihood of us getting where we want to go seems to go waaaay up. It’s empirical. Just look at […]
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Starting is the most important
They tell me that “done is better than perfect”, and I think it’s over-hyped. Starting is more important. “Done is better than perfect” – It’s supposed to anesthetise my ego, to free me from the attachments I have to the work. If I’m worried about how the work will be perceived, about how I’ll be […]
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Enrollment and buy-in
When we want to make a change, a change for ourselves or a change that helps others get to where they want to go, we’re going to need enrolment. There’s no way around it. Enrolment. Your name needs to be on the roll, the long list of names rolled up into a scroll in Medieval […]
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Amat victoria curam
This is popularly translated as “Victory loves preparation”, however I recently came across a few discussions on latin in which it is suggested that the literal translation is “victory loves care”, meaning care in the sense of taking pains to achieve something. From that comes the popular translation “victory loves preparation”, though it also puts […]
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Pings
It seems that everything pings these days, everything except the things that matter. Browser alerts, desktop notifications, calendar alarms, a thousand apps with a thousand pings – they do it because it works… for them. The fact that most pings are set up to be self serving doesn’t change the fact that the ping works. […]
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Fully baked
When we get a taste of something amazing, a new innovation, a work of art, an incredible song, it’s easy to forget that often, we’re tasting something fully baked. The fact that it’s fully baked is so obvious that it hides in plain sight. But before it was fully baked, it was a bunch of […]
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It’s time ‘synthetic’ got some better P.R.
Could it be that ‘authentic’ is overrated? Could it be that you should be a little more synthetic? Authentic has a lot of good P.R., synthetic – not so much. We tend to think of authentic as pure, the true version, the real deal, and we tend to think of synthetic as artificial, not natural, […]
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Innovating without a 4th wall
I’ve been an entertainer for 28 years. Not an actor, an entertainer. One difference between the two is the 4th wall. When you’re an entertainer, there isn’t one. When there’s no 4th wall and you get something right, you know, you can feel it. And when you get it wrong, when something bombs, you feeeeeel […]
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Problems, puzzles and mysteries
The world is full of problems, puzzles and mysteries, and you should be solving puzzles. (Unless it’s one of our Murder Mysteries, in which case, you should totally solve the mystery!) But the rest of the time, you should be solving puzzles. Why puzzles? Why not problems? Problems have solutions. That’s what makes them problems. […]
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How much rope?
There’s an idea in the western world that freedom is good, and following on, that maximising freedom maximises good and that restricting freedom is bad. This idea is so ingrained in us that it can trip us up. A well meaning, generous leader who wants to give a team the power to exercise their skills, […]
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Leadership is a practice, and it could be yours
Stepping out of your comfort zone seems like it must, by definition, be an uncomfortable act. But what if it wasn’t? Putting your hand up to make a change can be scary. You’re volunteering to step out of your comfort zone and into the unknown to make a change, and there’s a chance you might […]
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The canary in the call centre
“But sir, I’m just doing my job“ That phrase is a canary in the coalmine that’s become your customer service department. If your staff have to use it, you have a problem. If you’re a leader, and you hear it, you have made some serious mistakes. That phrase is a defence mechanism used by the […]
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Juggling shiny things
In The Practice Seth talks about how he’s taught a lot of people to juggle, and the lesson is that in order to learn to juggle, one needs to ignore the outcome, that (perhaps counterintuitively) catching the ball isn’t the most important part of learning to juggle. Reading the passage, it strikes me that learning […]
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Creative courage
I often hear people claim that they aren’t creative, but I don’t think that’s them, I think that’s fear talking. It’s not that you aren’t creative, it’s merely that you think being creative can be fatal, which is absurd 99.9% of the time. The streets are not littered with people rolling on the floor who’s […]
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Ringing in the rituals
What is a ritual? What’s it for? The graduation ceremony. An engagement ring. An 18th birthday party. What are they for? In our culture rituals are often used to mark a change of state. You were a student, and now you’re qualified. You were single, and now you’re betrothed. You were a minor, and now […]
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Who’s watching you play?
If you want to get good at tennis, you need to hit lots of tennis balls. And while you’re hitting all those tennis balls, you can see where they go and try making various adjustments. What you can’t see is the arch of your back, the angle of your hips, where your feet are at […]
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Who plays the game
If you’re a freelancer working for yourself, or a member of a team who needs to ship the work, then your job is to get onto the field and play the game. If you’re a bootstrapper building a business bigger than you, or the leader of a team then your job isn’t to get onto […]
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Frustration leads to burnout
Whether we’re leaders, team members or freelancers we need to watch out for frustrations that mount over time without resolutions. When we become chronically frustrated our ability to care begins to wane. That’s going to turn out badly. We don’t want lives or workplaces filled with people who have ceased to care. We must take […]
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What goes with YOU?
Birthday cakes go with… Birthdays! What else goes with birthdays? Decor, entertainment, catering, venues… Find the people who supply the things that go with what you do. The mom who wants to hire a face painter for her daughter’s birthday probably also wants a cake. The face painter (probably) doesn’t bake cakes, but you do! […]
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Where are they
Where are they, the people you seek to serve? If the people you seek to serve are all hanging out at the mall, then be present at the mall. If the people you seek to serve are all hanging out on LinkedIn or Twitter, then be present on LinkedIn or Twitter. Your business social media […]
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The Competence Problem
If you’re a freelancer, a creative, a small business, then you probably have a competence problem, and not the obvious one. The obvious one is lacking competence. Not that one. That’s probably not the problem. No, your problem is the opposite. The competence problem is that there’s too much of it. Every Facebook group, every […]
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Show your work
A fellow creative recently pondered whether creatives need a degree or not. I think a degree is for HR departments. It helps them whittle a thousand job applicants down to a hundred. Barring obvious professional qualifications (I want to drive over a bridge built by a qualified engineer, not someone who taught themselves on YouTube) […]
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Some perspective to get perspective.
Take a few minutes to stare off into the distance; it creates perspective. Pun intended. Allowing your mind to wander frees it up to make connections. So getting some visual perspective can facilitate mental perspective.
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Don’t fool yourself
Something that’s helped me understand and pursue happiness is learning to tell the difference between when I want something and when I want the IDEA of something. I think we often get them confused. Do I want to look like a Men’s Health cover model? If course I do! Actually no, I don’t. I only […]
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Be bad.
Are you going to do something bad this week? I hope so. Not bad as in naughty, not something immoral. Bad as in, of a lower quality than you’d like it to be one day. My guitar playing is REALLY bad. But everyone who is good at something was bad at it first. When we […]
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The Practice = 2+2
I like to do a quick skim of a book I’m about to read to start building the semantic tree on which to hang what I learn when I get into the book, and what I was struck by as I skimmed through The Practice by Seth Godin was that it doesn’t actually appear to […]
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Getting started with ‘Traction’ by Gino Wickman
Traction by Gino Wickman puts foward a structure for running a business, a game plan. I know a few founders who’ve just got the book and I’ve invited them to a reading club with a twist; a doing club. Doing because a book like Traction isn’t just meant to be read, it’s meant to be […]
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How To Win In The Post-Service Economy
Service has become commoditised. We expect our food will be prepared quickly, and we expect that the food will be great, because great service is the new minimum expectation. We only go to the restaurant / hotel / mechanic / insert-your-business-here if it has 4 or 5 stars. Only 3 stars? Meh … Great service […]
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Scaling A Personal Services Business Through Experience Design
I was chatting to a physiotherapist this morning; she’s in the process of opening her third practice. One of the challenges she faces in scaling her business is that physiotherapy, like other personal service businesses, is frequently built on personal brands. Her clients like her. They don’t want to be treated by another physio in […]
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How To Increase The Quantity And Quality Of Our Purpose-Full Epiphanies
Our biology can increase the number of epiphanies we have by strengthening relevant mental connections and pruning away connections to irrelevant ideas, providing we tune our biology towards our purpose journey.
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Rituals Are A Secret Weapon To Defeat `The Scroll´, And Be The Person We Want To Be.
A ritual is an act that sends a signal, often of a transition. When facing down the distractions of the ‘Scroll’, rituals are our secret weapon.
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Three Small Business Misconceptions, And Suggested Books To Read.
‘What is your “job” when you start a business’; ‘What “recipe” to use’; and ‘Choosing your target market’ are areas often misunderstood by entrepreneurs.
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To Flourish, We Must Consciously Choose Our Habits, And Practice Them Daily.
In order to be the best version of ourself, to achieve a complete and happy life, we must consciously choose our habits and practice them daily.